James M. Dorsey
ARTICLES BY: James M. Dorsey
The Public Decency Law Puts Saudi Reforms in Perspective
In an indication that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is walking a fine line, Saudi media are reporting that the government is still...
Russia Joins Gulf States to Help Sudan’s Military Crush Protestors
Documents leaked to The Guardian and MHK Media, a Russian-language news website, by the London-based Dossier Centre, an investigative group funded by exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have...
Soccer Emerges as the Potential Icebreaker of the Gulf Crisis
It was on the soccer pitch that 2022 World Cup host Qatar definitively shrugged off the UAE-Saudi-led economic and diplomatic boycott of the Gulf state,...
Arab, Russian, and Pakistani Protesters Learn the Lessons of 2011
The recent crackdown in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, in which some 100 people were reportedly killed and hundreds wounded, bears all the hallmarks of the...
How Real Is Saudi Religious Moderation?
Muhammad bin Abdul-Karim Al-Issa is the public face of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)’s version of moderate Islam. A 54-year-old former justice minister,...
Arab Power Struggles Are Alive, Well, and Thriving
Protesters in Algeria and Sudan are determined to prevent a repeat of Egypt, where a UAE- and Saudi-backed military officer rolled back the achievements of...
Battling for the Mideast’s Future: Arab Protests 2.0
Developments across north Africa and the Middle East demonstrate that the drivers of the 2011 popular revolts that swept the region and forced the leaders...
Will Internal Differences Disrupt the Russia-China Alliance Against America?
Addressing last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, then-US Secretary of Defense James Mattis dismissed fears first voiced in 1997 by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National...
Protests Could Prompt New Democratic Revolutions in the Gulf
The past eight years have not been particularly kind to the Gulf counter-revolution. Its one success, Egypt, has produced some of the harshest repression in the...
Was Trump’s Designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a Mistake?
The US designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and the Iranian response, has potentially put US military personnel in...
Turkey Plants Its Flag in Christchurch
While showing footage of the March 15 shooting rampage in Christchurch, New Zealand at a rally in advance of March 31 local elections, Turkish president...
Is Trump’s Approach to Iran and North Korea the Best Approach?
President Donald Trump’s currently failing “maximum pressure” approach to Iran, as well as North Korea, begs the question what his true objectives are and what...
Why Are Egypt’s Sisi and Other Brutal Dictators Afraid of Soccer Fans?
Ali Issa Ahmad, a British soccer fan, lingered in jail in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) earlier this year for wearing a Qatari soccer jersey during...
Does Saudi Arabia Really Want Regime Change in Iran?
Officially, both Saudi Arabia and the US, which withdrew last year from the 2015 international accord that curbs the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and imposed...
Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Complains About Current US Lunar Ability
UK Calls Seizure of Ship a ‘Hostile Act’; Iran Releases Video of Capture
US Authorizes Deployment of Troops, Resources to Saudi Arabia
Fasting and the Seventeenth of Tammuz